Many automotive components, and, in particular, components useful for engine cooling purposes in motorized vehicles, are made out of plastic or plastic-like materials. Some of these components useful for engine cooling purposes include radiator end tanks, charge air cooler air tanks, radiator cooling fans, radiator shrouds and automotive front end structures carrying heat exchangers or other engine related parts. Many of these components are essentially comprised of plastics or plastic-like materials, and have, in the past, had certain fillers or other materials such as glass in the form of fibers or glass fibers with mica or talc or other mineral, so as to produce different combinations of properties and advantages in this so called ‘modified’ plastic.
As stated above, glass fiber filled materials alone can exist in multiple applications, and in automotive heat exchanger applications. Glass-mineral filled parts have also been described for use in vehicle shroud applications. Glass filled plastic materials have been used in front end carrier parts; combination glass fiber filling and metal hybrid parts are described as useful in front end carriers, as well as glass fiber filling only in some front end carriers.
Though multiple uses for products having certain glass and plastic compound components exists, it has also been found that in order to form these compound components for many automotive applications, specific additives to enhance needed properties, such as heat stabilizers to resist high temperatures or fluid stabilizers to resist against specific fluids or coupling agents to improve adhesion between glass or filler to plastic etc., have had to be used.
Glass fiber filling has often been used in other plastic and plastic like material applications to give a stronger part than that achievable in plastic and plastic like materials that have only talc or mica. Though they improve strength of the base material more than talc or mica or calcium carbonate etc., they also create non-uniform shrinkage and make part dimensions unstable. Whereas parts can be designed using smaller aspect ratio fillers (such as talc or mineral or combination of glass fibers and other fillers mixed in plastic compounds) for economic reasons, and are manufactured to provide improved dimensional stability of the part due to smaller aspect ratio fillers, this is not always desirable. More desirable is use of high modulus materials like glass in a lower aspect ratio when strength and improved dimensional stability is required. To reach this desired effect, solid glass beads have been proposed, and can be used, as filler to improve upon dimensional stability, while providing a stronger part than that achieved by combination of talc or minerals like fillers when mixed with glass fibers. However, these solutions to the strength and stability needs in a variety of automotive applications have the disadvantage of higher weight due to higher density of glass in parts comprising materials such as solid beads; and thus they are not as cost effective.
A number of processes to cast materials are found, for example in WO 0035648, Holtzberg, published Jun. 22, 2000; U.S. Pat. No. 6,344,160, Emmert et al., issued Dec. 21, 2001; U.S. Pat. No. 6,103,156, Holtzberg, issued Aug. 15, 2000; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,849,229, Holtzberg, issued Dec. 15, 1998. Descriptions exist of the use of glass fibers in a polymerized mixture to produce structural parts in which they are cast.